In Vista, the default memory cache size is 128 MB. This is a bit small for some applications and can cause performance problems. You can increase the default memory cache size to 256 MB by using the following registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon The value for this key should be set to “1” if you want the default memory cache size to be increased to 256 MB.

I’ve found a slightly documented tweak that will allow you to tell Windows to use more cache for the NTFS “pool”, which should increase performance if your system opens and closes a lot of files all the time like mine does.

According to the Microsoft documentation:

I’ll be testing this change out myself, and I really hope to get feedback from our excellent readers on this one. Please note that I’ve not run any benchmarks yet, so I can’t confirm yet that this yields any major benefit in real-world performance.

Command Line Hack

Open up an Administrator mode command prompt by right-clicking and choosing Run as Administrator, or type in cmd into the start menu search box and use Ctrl+Shift+Enter.

Type in the following command to increase the cache setting:

To check the current value, type in this command:

To change the setting back to the default, use this command:

As always, these “slightly” documented settings can screw up your system, so perform at your own risk. Also, you’ll likely have to reboot the machine to see any difference.

Manual Registry Hack

You can also set this value by changing a registry parameter. Open up regedit.exe through the start menu search or run box, and then navigate down to the following key:

Double-click on the NtfsMemoryUsage key on the right-hand side and change the value to 2. Here’s the available values:

Not Set: 0 Set to Default: 1 Increase Cache: 2

According to the documentation the default setting is “1”, but by default the key is set to “0”. Typically in that scenario the setting of “0” means “Not Set”, which means the system uses the default setting. You should be able to change the value to either “0” or “1” in order to change this back to default.

This setting also works in Windows Server 2003.